


perish twice

by victorlimadelta



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Canon Compliant, M/M, Soulmate-Identifying Marks
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-20
Updated: 2021-02-20
Packaged: 2021-03-17 04:29:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,005
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29587263
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/victorlimadelta/pseuds/victorlimadelta
Summary: Lance’s wrists are sore. Well, mostly his left wrist, actually. He’s still not used to ambidextrous wielding, but that’s not entirely it. As they get closer and closer to the most crucial mission of their lives, his soulmark is acting up more and more, acting like it might actually burn through skin and bone to try to make an impression on him that it’s not to be ignored. Lance unseals the seam in his suit connecting sleeve to glove just so he can massage the tendon.Keith has his eyes trained on Lance’s skin. “That your only one?” he asks.—Lance has always had a tattoo of a flame on the inside of his left wrist, and he can’t figure out why the concept of Keith burns him so badly.
Relationships: Keith/Lance (Voltron)
Comments: 13
Kudos: 179





	perish twice

**Author's Note:**

> For a lovely Klance lover named Daive during the Klance Valentines 2021 exchange!

Lance McClain has a tattoo of a flame on the inside of his left wrist.

He’s had it there since he was born. It doesn’t hurt, just looks a whole lot like a fire emoji taking up the small space on his pulse point. Sometimes he rubs it when he’s agitated, but no amount of scrubbing makes it go away.

His _mamá_ brings him up in the tradition just like she raised his four older siblings, using his oldest brother Marco as an example. Marco was born with a tattoo, too, just like most everybody else. Some people have more than one, and some people don’t have one at all—and _Mamá_ tells Lance that even if he never showed one as a baby, she’d love him just the same.

See, the tattoo is a soulmark, she explains, and it’s supposed to represent your soulmate, the love of your life. And some people’s hearts are big enough for more than one, and some people’s hearts don’t work like everyone else’s, and that’s okay, she says, but he can see the relief on her face when she touches his. Marco, she says, used to have a tattoo of an aloe plant on his right forearm, as big as his hand, until he met Lisa. Lisa had been a medical assistant at a local clinic when Marco had gone in with a burn, and she had rubbed a gel into his arm that made him feel better and that had rubbed the tattoo away. That meant they were soulmates.

Now they’re married, and oh, and by the way, Lance is going to be an uncle soon, because his _cuñada_ Lisa is having a baby. _Tío_ Lance, his _mamá_ whispers with tears in her eyes, and then hugs him close and tells him not to grow up or lose his tattoo too fast. He promises, and hugs her, and runs off to look for his big sister Rachel so they can beachcomb for cool shells.

What Lance’s _mamá_ doesn’t tell him, his _papi_ makes up for. It’s rare to see one on a pulse point, because those are intense soulmate connections, to the point of being twinflames bound by fate, he tells him. And left-sided placements are bad luck, apparently. Lastly, his _papi_ tells him not to get any other tattoos until he’s an adult or he won’t get any garlic knots for the rest of his life. That’s serious! Lance nods, promises his dad just like he promised his mom, and then has to scrub the dirt off his face so he can see Veronica off to her plane to the mainland and some famous galaxy place.

What his parents can’t say, his friends show him. Friends kick off a shoe or roll up a sleeve or pull back their hair and Lance sees so many marks it’s ridiculous. Most are bigger than his. Some cover a whole arm or leg. A lot of them have whole stories in the ink. A few are even words. Names, first words, declarations of love.

Lance rubs his wrist and wonders who’s going to light a fire under his skin.

🔥🔥🔥

Lance McClain is a Galaxy Garrison cadet, and he has a tattoo of a flame on the inside of his left wrist.

It’s covered up by the white cap of the sleeve of his orange Galaxy Garrison cadet uniform. It’s hard to tell who else still has a soulmark in his class. He’s fairly certain that, at sixteen, he’s a little too old to still be looking for his other half. If she meant so much to him, wouldn’t he have met her by now?

“James, Geoffrey.”

“Here, Professor.”

The instructor leading their flight class is a man with skin as rich as Lance’s, brown hair severe under his beret and half-rimmed glasses stern over his gray officer uniform. Lance can’t bring himself to care about his name yet, Adam something-or-other. All he knows is, he has to wait through this year before he can test into fighter pilot class and finally fly sims with his personal hero, Lieutenant Takashi Shirogane. That guy’s been to, like, Mars and stuff.

“Kogane, Keith.”

A shiver goes up Lance’s back. In front of him and two desks to the right, against the far side of the classroom, a student with black hair and a mullet-looking shag at the nape of the neck raises a hand and says “here” in the most bored tone Lance has ever heard. What the hell—a boy? With a haircut like that? Kogane-comma-Keith doesn’t even look away from where he’s staring out of the window, up into the clouds. How can he be so blasé when this is the first day of the rest of their lives as pilots for the Garrison? It makes Lance’s wrist itch, and he digs the nails of his right hand into his tattoo.

“Larimar, Odile.”

“Here.” A girl’s voice. Lance is staring at Kogane-comma-Keith like that mullet might have some answers for him. Why does he sound like he’d rather be anywhere in the universe but sitting in this classroom? Why does he look like he has nothing to learn and could easily out-fly all of them without batting an eyelash? Why are his shoulders so hunched, all the way around his ears, like he’s trying to fend off a preemptive stab in the back?

“Locasio, Audrey.”

The guy on Lance’s left raises his hand. “Here.” Kogane-comma-Keith has a bruise fading on his left cheekbone, or maybe that bruise is his soulmark, doubly unlucky because it’s on his face His hands are in a pair of fingerless gloves that Lance is certain aren’t Garrison-issued. Does Kogane-comma-Keith still have his tattoo? Is it hidden under the leather that covers him from palm to wrist?

“McClain, Lance.”

Maybe if Lance glares at Kogane-comma-Keith for long enough, the other boy will turn around and—and then what? Snap at him? Tell him to mind his own business? Dismiss him like he’s not good enough to talk to? Look through him like he’s not even there? Maybe there might be something in his eyes that could answer all of Lance’s questions.

“Again: McClain, Lance.”

Is it because Kogane-comma-Keith is a guy, or is it that he’s the first person Lance has ever met that’s made him feel like he’s looking at the future? Lance feels like he’s been hit in the kneecap with a rubber mallet only to kick himself in the face. When he peels up his left sleeve to look at where he’s been itching, the tattoo is still there, and that makes his blood boil. This can’t be the love of his life.

“For a third time: McClain, Lance.”

The student behind Lance kicks the seat of his chair so hard his butt flies up an inch in shock; he snaps his head back to the blackboards at the front of the room and nearly salutes on instinct. “ _¡Aquí!_ ” he panics.

There are laughs from the rest of the class. Lance squirms in his seat, burning with embarrassment. And Kogane-comma-Keith doesn’t even tear his gaze away from the sky, although Lance swears he can see him flush. This guy is his _sworn rival_ now.

🔥🔥🔥

Lance McClain is a Paladin of Voltron, and he still has a tattoo of a flame on the inside of his left wrist.

He can recognize Keith’s mullet from half a mile away, even though Keith left the Garrison seven months ago. When he and his team get into the medical tent, though, Lance has to interrupt the guy so he can save his hero. Keith doesn’t even know who he is—even after his trademark “The name’s Lance?” and an eyebrow waggle. Nothing. Thought he was an engineer, not even a pilot.

It hurts to be ignored like this, even though there’s nothing between them that means Lance should be craving the attention so badly. So... it’s that he wants to _be_ Keith, right? Not the fact that Keith sets a fire under his skin that keeps eating away at him even when they’re not together—that’s their rivalry, not anything else. Right?

At least Lance comes in first, for once, when Blue chooses _him_ over the guy who’s been tracking her across the desert for half a year. And Keith trusts him enough to let him fly the five of them out of the entire goddamn Milky Way. So... that’s something.

🔥🔥🔥

Lance McClain has cheated death with a tattoo of a flame on the inside of his left wrist.

Their first week in space, he gets KO’d by a fake Galra drone and comes to just in time to save Voltron’s collective ass from a big purple cat furry with a well-timed shot from his bayard. The next time he’s conscious, he wakes up to the _zzzt!_ of Pidge’s bayard slicing Shiro’s handcuffs. His vision is blurry, but not so bad that he can’t see another Paladin kneeling down by his side. The red one. Oh. Keith. “—nce,” he’s saying, voice ringing with quiet concern. Lance only has the energy to raise an arm, paw at where the voice is coming from, but Keith meets him halfway, pulling him in. “Are you okay?”

“We did it,” Lance rasps. He’s full of nothing but pain, and his only hold on reality is the grasp of Keith’s left hand in his. “We are a good team.”

Keith—smiles? Is that even a thing that his mouth can do? And why is it making Lance’s stomach feel so warm? And he’s not... letting go... his fingers are still around Lance’s palm, pressing the pulse points at their wrists together, and Lance—

—promptly passes out again—

—and wakes up a day later, _vertical_ for some reason, all pale in a white skinsuit with legs as wobbly as a newborn faun’s, woozy enough to try to flirt with Allura before he gets some quality food goo in his stomach. His team debriefs him warmly, and Lance couldn’t be more grateful that these are his guys. “Wow. Thanks, everybody. Sounds like the mice did more than you, though,” and he looks to Keith from under high-arched eyebrows.

From where he’s perched on the tabletop, Keith crosses his arms even tighter. “I punched Sendak!”

“Yeah, apparently after I _emerged from a coma_ and _shot his arm off_ ,” Lance argues.

“We had a bonding moment,” Keith insists, his voice high and tight. “I cradled you in my arms!” He demonstrates like he’s carrying Lance again, and his gloves flick up just enough, and Lance can see—tucked into the inside of Keith’s left wrist is what looks like a blue-Bic stick-and-poke of a hexagon.

“Nope,” Lance denies it. “Don’t remember.” Which is true. “Didn’t happen.” It couldn’t have. Because if it had, he wouldn’t have his tattoo anymore, right?

Wait, is he giving serious thought to this Keith-is-his-soulmate idea?

🔥🔥🔥

Lance McClain is seventeen years old, and he’s getting sick of the tattoo of a flame on the inside of his left wrist.

They’re on Balmera X-95-Vox when he’s working with Keith and Hunk to incapacitate some bases on the surface. Normally it’s just plasma-laser-like jets of power that come out of a Lion’s mouth when it’s blasting into enemies, but then—Keith turns up the heat. Literally. Apparently the Red Lion has had a heat ray all along and lets out jets of fire to melt through a laser cannon that had been attacking Keith. “Whoa!” Keith says through the comms as the flames hit. “Did you guys just see that? I got fire power!”

“Hey! I want that!” That’s cool! Why doesn’t Lance have anything like that? Why does Keith get all the cool toys first? Why is he burning with jealousy?

And then the cannon tower starts careening towards the surface of the not-a-planet-actually-a-living-being oh no _oh no OH NO_ until Lance has a glittering flash of a brilliant idea. His Lion knows what to do, and Blue ends up freezing it solid before it hits the Balmera’s crust. “Hah, aw, snap! These rays are super cool, just like me!” Because if Keith can say something cheesy, then Lance totally can, too.

Except—except that the teasing he would normally get from Keith for his line never ends up coming over the comms. Things feel almost surly on his end, like he’s stuck in his own head, and it keeps going even as they touch down on the Balmera’s surface and start in on trying to destroy the Galra drone ships. “Let’s go!” Keith yells, bringing out his bayard and preparing to attack.

No, nope, nah, not happening. “Whoa, whoa, whoa!” Lance physically, bodily grabs Keith by the collar of his Paladin armor and drags him back to cover, because whatever he’s about to do is monumentally stupid. “Cool your jets, Keith! Don’t you remember all that stuff about this Balmera thing being a sensitive animal?”

“Oh,” Keith says dully, “right.”

“Yeah, so we can’t just blow things up like a psycho.”

“Oh,” again. Absolutely no comeback to the direct insult. This is... nice. Weird, but nice. “You got a better idea?” Keith asks him, in a tone that suggests he’s listening.

“I do,” Lance says. It’s not Keith’s fault that his entire skillset is based around direct violence and hand-to-hand combat. “We sneak into the control room to shut down the bay doors,” Lance explains. “That’ll trap the ships in.”

“That—!” And Lance feels Keith’s eyes on him, can nearly hear him biting his own tongue. “Actually...” Oh, is this really happening? “Is a better idea,” Keith admits, looking at Lance like what he has to say actually matters.

Lance lets Keith have this one. No sense in being a sore winner—but it does resonate with him, that he gets a cool Lion power and gets Keith to actually listen to him all on the same day. Something about the other guy has... changed, a little. Almost imperceptible, if Lance hadn’t been his right-side support for the past however-long. Keith _wishes_ he could put stuff past Lance.

After their awesome and hugely successful Balmera mission, the Paladins leave Allura to recuperate in the Castle while Coran leads them to what he calls the Karthulian System. “The ancient training grounds of the original Paladins,” he explains. There’s a planet for each of their Lions. Keith’s has volcanoes. Lance’s has a constant ice storm, or something.

None of them end up going for training, passing over it entirely to go to some bar called the Fripping Bulgogian. Lance does get a chance to comm Coran to ask what the deal is with all the unnecessarily dangerous stuff, and the Altean’s answer is predictably confounding: “Because you’re guardian spirits, now.”

“Huh, okay.” Record scratch. “Hold the phone—are you telling me that we really are some kind of lion gods or something?”

“Well,” and that’s the masking-homesickness-with-humor voice that Lance knows all-too-well, “you act as the personification of your Lions. So, with Red being at home on Yendailian, Keith is the guardian spirit of fire.”

“And I’m the guardian spirit of ice?”

“No, of course not!” Coran chirps over the comms. “Water, actually.”

“Because that makes sense,” Keith pops off sarcastically. “ _Not_.”

“Yes!” Lance agrees. “Thank you, Keith!” Hold up, what the hell? Since when does he agree with Keith about stuff?

And since when does it make so much sense that Keith is the personification of flames?

🔥🔥🔥

Lance McClain still, after all this time, has a tattoo of a flame on the inside of his left wrist, even as his own flame is threatening to go out.

This whole take-out-Zarkon thing is... pretty intimidating. They’ve been through a lot between coming to space and now. That weird wormhole where they all ended up separated and Lance almost died on a water planet trying to save all of them from being brainwashed. Kicking the Galra off of Olkarion. Meeting that good guy Galra, Ulaz, and losing him to a Ro-Beast like ten minutes later. Trying to figure out how Zarkon was tracking them and losing track of Keith and Allura for too long. That time when the Red Lion almost busted down a secret base of Marmorites (that’s what Lance is calling them) and Keith found out for the first time that he’s Galra enough to be a member.

Even with all that, nothing really sets a guy up to be ready to defeat the megalomaniacal dictator-emperor of the known universe with just a few warships, five sentient kittybots piloted by some teenagers and a guy who’s not even seven in Leap Years, an unstable gravity well, and an oversized piece of ancient technology that might need bailed out if it’s too big to fail.

He’s never going to feel any more prepared, but it’s not like he’ll regret it, exactly, if he gets in a little more practice. It’s just him and Keith in the training bay. Lance has the little pod-drone things out so he can snipe them down with his blaster-bayard, and Keith is dancing with a gladiator-bot that keeps jumping out of range of his swords. His real problem is that he can’t stay focused when Keith is all... here. Like this. At least the little lasers don’t hurt too much when they hit his paladin armor, but he’s getting good enough that he can snipe some out of the corners of his eyes.

Hell if he’s going to give in before Keith does, even if he’s exhausted, but the other guy seems to have had enough, too, face pouring with sweat as he lunges back from one final stab of the robot’s spear. “End training sequence,” he announces, and both his gladiator and Lance’s bots get swallowed by the floor.

Thank goodness. Lance’s wrists are sore. Well, mostly his left wrist, actually. He’s still not used to ambidextrous wielding, but that’s not entirely it. As they get closer and closer to the most crucial mission of their lives, his soulmark is acting up more and more, acting like it might actually burn through skin and bone to try to make an impression on him that it’s not to be ignored. Lance unseals the seam in his suit connecting sleeve to glove just so he can massage the tendon.

Keith has his eyes trained on Lance’s skin. “That your only one?” he asks.

“My only one,” Lance mutters, rolling his eyes. “Uh, yeah?” People don’t normally get more than one.

“I had three.” Except for Keith, apparently, who is just super special. Gee, Kogane, how come the universe lets you have three soulmates? “Not like that,” he explains, like he can read right into Lance’s stare. “I only have one now.”

“Okay, but what about the other two?”

“I had one here,” Keith explains, lifting the long hair at the nape of his neck. “A purple V. I hated it.” Oh, so that’s why the mullet. “It disappeared the second I got into the pilot seat of the Galaxy Garrison flight simulator. I don’t think anyone knew what that was supposed to mean. I just... I guess I’m in love with space? Or, like, this is where I’m supposed to be.”

That makes enough sense. “And the other one?”

Keith touches the nadir of the Voltron mark on the breastplate of his armor. “It didn’t even show up until—I was ten or so. A little cartoon-y rocket. And as of May 12th, it was gone.”

The night they busted Shiro out of Garrison custody. “So Shiro’s your soulmate?”

Keith shrugs, rubbing at his left wrist as he whumps down onto a bench. “I’m not _in love with him_ or anything,” he insists. “He’s more like... family. I think it would feel different if it was something else.”

“Like your third one?” Lance prompts.

Keith unzips his suit just like Lance had, showing the inside of his left wrist. Yup, it’s the mark Lance thought he’d seen before: a small blue hexagon. It feels almost obscene to see Keith’s bare skin like this, covered as it usually is by his glove or his Voltron armor. “I have no idea what it means,” he admits.

“Bad luck,” Lance comments, and both of them do that teeth-showing that isn’t a grin at all. “Hey, uh,” and on instinct he grabs two hydration pouches, holding one out to Keith just so he can divert away from the conversation’s unpleasant turn. “Here.”

Keith takes it, stabbing the straw through the top so he can suck it down. “Water, huh? That’s kind of your thing, isn’t it?”

“I wish it wasn’t,” Lance grumbles, taking a seat next to Keith. “Listen, I never asked to be Blue’s pilot, or a Paladin of Voltron, or the guardian spirit of water. I’m just Lance. And I kinda want this whole thing to happen already, to see if—” and he gulps. “If I get to go home after all this is over.” Because there’s a very good chance he won’t.

“I never wanted to be a guardian spirit of fire,” Keith says quietly. “My dad—he was a firefighter.” And that’s good enough reason for Lance, but Keith keeps talking, and Lance clicks his teeth together so hard they hurt so he doesn’t accidentally interrupt. “He, uh.” Keith swallows. “He died. At work. Went back in after some kids in an apartment building and never came back out.”

“Oh,” Lance whispers. “I’m so—Keith, I’m so sorry—”

“Don’t.” Keith’s rubbing at the inside of his left wrist, too, like he hurt it during training. He has a point—he’s never taken pity well, and Lance isn’t about to make him. “I just don’t... gah. Hurting people to save the universe? That’s fine. Hurting them with fire? I’d rather burn alive.”

“I know how you feel.” Lance is still massaging the pulse point of his left hand. “I grew up near a beach. The riptides killed people. And now I have an ice ray and a sonar gun and I’m just as deadly as the water. I hate it.”

When Lance looks up, Keith is staring at him. At his hands, and then at his face. His hands again—“Lance,” he says, voice cracking. “Did you—just rub off your tattoo?”

“No, idiot, I—” But when he removes his thumbprint from his wrist, the mark is gone. “Oh my god,” he realizes. “Keith—show me the inside of your wrist.”

Keith rolls his sleeve up, pushes his glove down his palm. Lance can’t help but reach out to touch the milk-white skin there, fingertips nudging over the purple veins in Keith’s wrist. His _bare_ wrist. “It was here,” Keith says weakly. “Just a second ago—you saw it!”

“Ice,” Lance realizes. Frozen water, a blue hexagon, the powers Lance wishes he didn’t have. “And fire.” The destructive force Keith hopes he never has to become.

“Lance,” Keith says, eyes sparkling like the stars he’s in love with, and he leans in close to kiss him.

🔥🔥🔥

Lance McClain no longer has a tattoo of a flame on the inside of his left wrist. The delicate skin is touching against Keith’s, and he takes the other man’s hand gladly. Then, as awkwardly as it all started, it ends—he’s pulled in, encircled by Keith’s arms hooking up from around his waist, with a gentle sigh let out into his collarbone. Lance holds him close with one arm around his shoulders and his other hand at the back of his head. And if he drops his lips down to plant a kiss in Keith’s sloppy black hair, who’s going to say anything? Who’s going to stop him?

Keith is his soulmate, after all. The flame may not be on his wrist anymore, but it’s in his heart, warm and steady and strong. It stokes his resolve into a roaring inferno—that they make a good team. That they’ll get through this together. As far as Lance is concerned, Keith is, like, the future.


End file.
